Savannah harbor deepening lawsuits settled, new hurdles emerge

A U.S. District Court judge in Charleston, S.C., on Tuesday approved a settlement that ends, at least temporarily, the legal challenges to deepening the Savannah harbor.

The agreement was reached after nine months of intense mediation among environmental groups and South Carolina government agencies on one side and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Georgia Ports Authority on the other.

At issue was the environmental damage that will result from digging the Savannah River’s navigation channel 5 feet deeper to accommodate bigger, more efficient ships.

New conservation efforts mandated by the settlement include land preservation along the river and its tributaries to protect drinking water quality, a decommissioning of the river’s navigation status above the harbor to allow for the return of its natural meandering course and a requirement that the corps proves the efficacy of a controversial oxygen injection system before any inner harbor dredging may begin.

This last requirement also comes with an escape clause for the conservation groups. If they’re not satisfied with the proof, they can reactivate their litigation.

“The dredging is (now) contingent on them working,” she said. “Before it wasn’t. It was, ‘Oh well, we’ll keep deepening and figure it out as we go along.’ Now the agreement has teeth to work it out as it goes along and with not just modeling but actual use.”

Georgia Ports Authority did a demonstration project with the oxygen injectors called Speece cones in 2007 that purported to show they restored the oxygen the deepening would deplete. An outside reviewer from the U.S. Geological Survey, however, indicated the results could have been natural changes in oxygen levels from tidal fluctuations.

Further analysis by a GPA consultant produced no response from USGS, and the corps considered the matter settled.

Project manager Jason O’Kane of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said if the oxygen injection proves inadequate there are ways to boost it, including adding more Speece cones to the 12 currently planned at a cost of $72.2 million.

As part of the settlement, GPA has agreed to establish an annual evergreen fund of $2 million for dissolved-oxygen maintenance for a period of 50 years.

The new mitigation adds $43.5 million to the $652 million project. GPA has agreed to bear most of the additional cost, with the Georgia Department of Transportation handing over $10 million worth of land in Jasper County, S.C., to the Savannah River Maritime Commission to serve as a possible future site of a Jasper port.

“We feel the settlement agreement validates the science and the worthwhile benefits of the project for both states,” O’Kane said.

Mitigation is projected to account for more than half the cost of the project, a fact proponents point to as due diligence but which can be seen as a drawback, too.

“Maybe the fact that they have do all this mitigation shows this is a tough place to do this kind of project,” said Chris DeScherer, senior attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center, which represented the Savannah Riverkeeper, the South Carolina Coastal Conservation League, and the South Carolina Wildlife Federation.

The South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control, the Georgia Ports Authority and the Savannah River Maritime Commission were intervenors in the litigation.

“We are pleased that the courts and all parties have agreed to virtually the same legal and environmental permit that the DHEC scientists suggested and the DHEC Board approved over a year ago,” said DHEC director Catherine Templeton.

The settlement was first announced last month and has since been agreed to by all parties.

In his order issued Tuesday, Judge Richard Mark Gergel retained jurisdiction over the matter to enforce compliance with the settlement and instructed the parties to give the court 15 days notice if they decide to terminate for cause.

Conservation groups had urged the corps to take a broader look at which ports need to be deepened, to both save taxpayer money and reduce environmental degradation, DeScherer said.

That didn’t happen.

“The settlement focuses more on offsetting the harms to the river from further deepening,” he said. “It does not address the institutional concerns about why the corps evaluates each of these projects in a vacuum.”

Still, the conservation groups were pleased.

“This is a vast improvement,” DeScherer said.

The settlement leaves only funding as the missing piece of harbor deepening. Georgia has already allotted $231.1 million to the project. Construction can begin once Congress completes action on the Water Resources Development Act.

The Senate version of the measure, passed this month, approves the $652 million cost level of the deepening, which has increased since the project was authorized 13 years ago. The House now takes up the bill.

“Now that the concern of litigation has been resolved by a universal settlement, this vital project will move forward,” said GPA Board Chairman Robert Jepson in a prepared statement. “The expanded harbor will perfectly complement Savannah’s landside infrastructure, which includes two Class I railroads, and direct access to Interstates 95 and 16.”

Morris News Service reporter Sarita Chourey contributed to this report.

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